Lily Rabe in a three-piece suit by The Frankie Shop, shirt by Brunello Cucinelli, and Casadei shoes.

#BTS

well suited
lily rabe
LOCATION

LOS ANGELES, CA

EDITOR IN CHIEF

TAMARA RAPPA

PHOTOGRAPHER

MATT SAYLES
COPIOUS

STYLIST

KATIE BOFSHEVER
A-FRAME AGENCY

HAIR

DENNIS GOTS
FORWARD ARTISTS

MAKEUP

SARAH USLAN
THE VISIONARIES AGENCY

          assistants FASHION: MALAIKA NGWANA PHOTO: OSCAR TORRES

Watch Lily Rabe in her chilling role as Betty Gore in David E. Kelley's Love + Death for HBO Max, which explores the notorious and tragic murder of Betty at the hands of Candy Montgomery.

lily rabe on on PLaying betty gore in love + death

"She was so with me throughout the shoot. She was really in my skin. Even after wrapping, it really did take me a minute. And sometimes I don't want to let someone go. I did need to let her go, but I felt so protective of her. It was an interesting one. Sometimes you really do have to kind of make an effort to let go and say goodbye, and that can be hard. Something that [Writer-Creator] David Kelley and [Director] Leslie Linka Glatter and I talked about, even before I had said yes to the project, was that Betty has this sort of pervasive and relentless lack of safety that she feels. I was so interested in that. They're from Kansas. In Kansas, she was a golden girl. From everything I know, she had a kind of an ease in her life that then goes away. I was so interested in investigating how that happened. It's not like she became a different person. She's the same person; they're both her. If she was this girl who was known for her smile and had a million Valentine's, who was voted most likely to succeed, and she finds herself in this situation where people are sort of handling her and making her feel like she's paranoid, how did she get there? What could have helped her? She's right about so much of it...this feeling that things are not okay, even if she's not naming the thing that's not okay. You can't just dismiss that as paranoia or hypochondria. Everything is based in some reality. I really wanted to investigate that, tell that part of her story. It felt so important to me, and it's why I wanted to play the part."

Subscribe to our Story + Rain Talks podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more to listen to the full conversation with Lily Rabe.